"Better Things" is a series of weekly posts, each about one song I really love, by an artist I haven't featured in the previous This Year or Portions For Foxes series. See the introduction for more.
Some songs just become part of your language - either the way you talk to other people, or deep in your own head. This is one of those for me. I don't know if I've ever referenced it out loud, but, deep in my head, it plays all the time.
This is Good Year by The Refreshments, from 1997. And, yes, it's yet another break-up song.
It's been a good year for bad days
Or a bad year for good days
The details are teen-coded, high-school-style: she wrote his name on the back of her notebook, "all adorned with smiles and hearts and stars;" they wrote each other "funny little letters" about the kind of books and music teens thirty years ago shared with each other.
And it's all over now:
That you found yourself a black magic marker
Just to make absolutely sure
It's a straightforward rock sound, big enough to matter and supple enough to groove, played by a band that had been together for a while at this point and just clicked.
If you've heard of the Refreshments at all, it's probably because of "Banditos" - the "everybody knows the world is full of stupid people" song - but they had two major-label records full of good songs (and one self-released record before that had most of the first record in a rawer form with a couple of extra bits, too). All of that is good, in a solid mid-90s rock sound that still works (at least I think so) today.
This one is my favorite song of theirs; it's the place I'd start.
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